Scientists Have Come Up With A Supercapacitor Battery Prototype

Scientists have come up with a new production technique for a supercapacitor battery prototype.

Beacon Transcript – Scientists have come up with a new production technique for a supercapacitor battery prototype which may ensure a longer device life and less charging needs.

The new production process and prototype are the work of a team of University of Central Florida or UCF NanoScience Technology Center scientists led by Nitin Choudhary.

The supercapacitor battery concept and prototype could come to transform into more powerful batteries that would store more power and support more charges.

Research showed that the batteries currently available on the market start losing their properties as they start degrading after about 18 months of usage.

According to Choudhary, by replacing current batteries with the supercapacitor, the devices would be able to charge in a matter of seconds.

Their usage time would also increase as they would need a new charge only after about a week’s time, or more.

As compared to most lithium-ion batteries, which have an average lifespan of about 300 to 500 charges, the supercapacitor has a life span of over 30,000 charges.

If they come to be fully developed and approved, the supercapacitor batteries could come to be used in smartphones and other electronic devices. Electric vehicles could also potentially beneficiate from the technology.

An impediment in the way of these new batteries was the supercapacitor’s usual size. As they can be quite large, their usage in smartphones, for example, would have implied a larger such device.

But the study has been addressing this issue as well as they developed quite a tiny prototype. The new supercapacitor could now quite easily be used even in digital devices as small as the various wearables.

The University of California team has managed to produce the new supercapacitors by using a nanometer thick tiny wire.

The prototype also boasts with a highly conductive core which contributes with its fast electron transfer. As such, the charging and discharging of power is much faster.

A high energy shell coating was also used so as to generate high power and energy densities.

The research team has been able to ensure the high results but smaller size as it has been studying nanomaterials and their usage.

Choudhary declared that their supercapacitor battery and its materials would surpass the current, conventional ones. The new battery would be better in terms of cyclic stability, power density, and energy density.

Still, the new prototype is only a proof-of-concept demonstration as studies show that it could have quite an impact on the market.

As the team is still developing the product and making it ready for future commercialization, Eric Jung is working towards patenting the new process with the help of the UCF Office of Technology.

Yeonwoong “Eric” Jung is a UCF assistant professor that also has joint appointments with the Materials Science and Engineering Department and the NanoScience Technology Centre.

The University of Central Florida are not the only ones at work on a new battery as Stanford University scientists have also been hard at work.

Last year, the university’s scientists revealed both an aluminum battery and a pure lithium anode which could potentially boost up battery life by about three times.